The future

Dear Friends of Per Frejvall,

We were absolutely shocked by the passing of this genius. Per was our most respected partner in developing a multitude of astro-related instruments and software - among that the praised 10Micron ModelMaker.

Thank you for still visiting his website. It has been kept open all this time and will remain unchanged as testimony of what this man had done - and still wanted to do - for Astronomy.

In the meantime we - as Baader-family - had received authorization from Pers family to go on with all his projects but it takes us way to much time to pick up the leads and to restart all his instruments and software - please excuse.

We know very well what Pers great ideas meant for Astro-imagers. Foremost the StickStation and the AstroHub, both to bear his name when they will be relaunched..

We will announce availability as soon as we have all production arranged, to continue the StickStation and to launch the long awaited AstroHub in exactly the same quality as Per would have done it himself.

We have just gone through a nightmare (not finished yet...) with the severe delays on another project - the 17.5 Morpheus eyepiece - to make it right. And we will not do the same mistake again.

Accordingly we will not shell out release dates for Pers instruments but work hard to get things right.

Thank you kindly for your patience.

Best regards,

Thomas Baader

BAADER PLANETARIUM

Blue Astro Products and Software

Welcome to Blue Astro, producer of nifty accessories for the serious astro imager. We produce electronics and software solutions for astro imaging and are based in Saltsjöbaden, Sweden. Design and production of electronics is done in-house, and we develop all our software ourselves.

Years of electronic and software design go into our products, and years of astronomy work forms the basis for the ideas behind the designs. Simply put, we make things we need ourselves in our astronomy work and couldn't find on the market.

For perfect control of the equipment on your scope, the Blue Astro Remote Control USB Hub is your ultimate companion. It sits between your scope and your mount in a Losmandy style extension, providing short cable routes and a single USB and 12V feed up to it — no tangling! Best of all, it contains 12V power control, dew heater control, focus motor driver and six powered and software un-pluggable USB ports.

The individual parts of the design have been verified over the past two years in our remote observatory in the French Provence Alps as well as in our laboratory and the balcony test rig, and now the consolidated design is ready!

The Hub will also be available in a simpler case and as board only, so that you may tailor it to your specific mounting needs. The picture shows the Losmandy version on a 10Microm GM1000HPS mount. Mechanics are from Baader Planetarium, a fact that vouches for perfect quality.

Our first design, a weather station device aimed at combating atmospheric refraction, is housed in a package very similar to a standard USB memory stick and is completely self-contained. It supports any ASCOM-compliant client that supports the new Observing Conditions interface; for instance Sequence Generator Pro, or any software you develop.

Roof and dome control — The Blue Astro Roller

Currently in development is a complete and very advanced roll-off roof controller. It uses solid state technology and is easy to install and operate. Naturally, it is driven by an ASCOM driver so that your observatory runs with standard software. The roof controller, currently dubbed "The Roller", is expected to be available for delivery some time during the summer of 2016 if we find the time, otherwise the fall is the best bet.

Software

Modern products contain software in the form of firmware, and our stuff is no different in that respect. In addition to firmware, application software and device drivers are needed, and we do supply these as well.

Open Source?

We have been asked about whether our software and firmware is Open Source. This is a concern for many as they have become victims of large corporations — or small ones for that matter — canceling a product and discontinuing all support and further development for it.

Generally speaking, we don't do Open Source. The reasons are many, the main ones being control and quality. The latter is often claimed to be the strength of Open Source, and to some extent that is true, but looking at it from another perspective, the situation often becomes the same as when a company cancels support when a dedicated group of enthusiasts move their focus to other challenging tasks and projects, effectively killing the Open Source project. The fact that anyone can pick up the source code and continue further development is of little comfort to the average user.

Our firmware is a bit special. The hardware platform is essentially but not exactly compatible with the Arduino environment. All our firmware is based on micro systems programming experience dating back to 1979, and we use our own lean-and-mean core that essentially gives us real-time response without the use of a real-time operating system core.

Our solution to the question of Open Source or not is simple: our software is proprietary, but the same moment we want to discontinue something we will release the code to the public.

Writing your own code

Yes, anyone can write code for using our products as the command protocol is always fully documented. We use two version of command protocol, one of our own design and one that is based on NMEA 0183. Both are simple to write software and drivers for, so whatever your favorite platform is you can use the products.